Dearest
by Periacta
Summary: After ROTOQ...3 perspectives


AN: In a very happy mood tonight...No idea why...anyway, I got the idea for this story from a short story by Jane Yolen called "Mama Gone" in the book Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Anyway, yeah, I just have the littlest inkling of an idea now as I write this note...I have no idea where it will go, though. And just because I'm a very insecure person, I'm gonna say that only the idea of her "coming back" is from the Jane Yolen story. The rest of it is MINE! ALL MINE!  
  
I  
  
She visited me nearly every night. I never told father, he would get angry- that is, angrier than usual. Nearly all of my memories of her came from her visits, I was three when father took her into the back room...and then told me I wouldn't be seeing her anymore. I guess he was wrong.  
  
I'd never seen her enter my room, she was just there. She never talked to me, just sat on my bed, next to me, and pulled me close to her. She felt real, like any live person. We'd sit there, she and I, for a while, I never noticed how long, and then, she'd go, just leave out my bedroom door. I have no clue where she went, I didn't check, I didn't want to check.  
  
II  
  
I nearly died when she came into our room-no -it was my room, now- that first time. Just seeing her there, standing in the doorway made me shrink under the covers. She had never scared me before, but she wasn't supposed to be her, punishing me...I had punished her for what she did, she earned it, I deserved nothing!  
  
I expected her to put her hands around my neck, to throttle me, or pick up that knife, the very same knife, from my bureau, where I kept it, unwashed, still crusted over with dried blood-hers. As she approached me, my grasp on the blankets tightened, as if I was afraid she would pull them away from me. She lay next to me, in her usual place, and pulled my head to her breast. Would she speak now? Apologize now for what she had dome in life? Ask forgiveness for tearing out my heart, for forcing me to do...what I had done? She didn't speak, but ran her fingers over my face, over my arms. I nestled against her chest, searching for her heart; I loved listening to it beat. There was no sound-only an eerie silence, unnatural and horrifying.  
  
It was then I cried. Not when I found out about her from DeLordy, not when she took her final breath, not when I had to tell our daughter she wasn't coming back, but that absence of sound, total absence of life in her, my love.  
  
III  
  
It was painful watching her grow up, turning to her friends' mothers for advice and support. It was painful seeing him cry, he had always been so strong. It would have been easier, so much simpler if I had just left, not returned night after night to watch them, see them live their lives without me. But I didn't know where to go. I expected some sort of instructions on where to go and what to do...but I got none. So I stayed, not knowing where to go, I stayed. They didn't notice me during the day, they were busy and distracted, they had lives to lead...unlike me.  
  
And so I waited, through the days for the night to fall, for them to retire to their beds, where they became more aware of other things, more aware of me. I loved to see her, to touch her and feel her, she reminded me of me, and of him. I knew she loved to see me, loved to be with me, but we both wished for something more. I knew she had questions for me, wanted to know about my life, and about my death. And I wanted to be closer, I wanted her to pour her feelings onto me, tell me her worries, her opinions. I wanted her to see me as her mother, not a strange woman so visited her every night.  
  
With him, my love, it was even more painful. I wanted to tell him so much, to explain it all to him, and I couldn't. I wanted him to love me again, and most of all I wanted an apology, an explanation as to why he took so much from me: himself, my daughter, my life. He wanted me back too, wanted to be able to hold me for longer. He needed to hear my voice, needed me to tell him that I still loved him, I always had, even as the knife tore apart my skin, and he looked at me; a look which had no pity, no understanding, no love. He needed me to tell him that, just as I needed to tell him.  
  
And so I came, and so I stayed. 


End file.
